Geek Out! Star Wars Rebels Edition

I haven’t given a Geek Out! in a while, so I thought I’d devote this one entirely to Star Wars Rebels, since more details have been coming out here and there in the past few months.

I’m excited for Star Wars Rebels, the new TV show coming out this fall. After being so hesitant and angry with The Clone Wars when it was released, and then enjoying it once I actually started watching it, I won’t be making the same mistake with Star Wars Rebels. I mean, this is a time period in the Star Wars that I’ve always wanted to know about. Clone Wars, not so much, but the formation of the Rebellion? Totally! I have an Alliance Starbird tattoo for a reason…

Before the Prequels were even released, I wanted to know how the Empire had begun, when the Jedi disappeared, and about Luke and Leia’s childhood. Will we know all of that? Probably not. Luke and Leia’s childhood would be pushing it, and I’m not sure if I even want to know about that. I would like there to be still SOME mystery about Star Wars, even with all these new movies and new TV show.

But what do we actually know about this show? Since Disney has acquired Lucasfilm, things have been very hush hush around Star Wars. I’m perfectly okay with that, as I love being spoiler-free and having surprises, but they have been a little more willing to let details leak regarding Rebels.

So what do we know?

Timeline

The series begins about 4-5 BBY, fourteen years into the reign of the Galactic Empire. So that means Luke and Leia are around 14 years old.

Ships

There is a ship called Ghost. Ghost is actually shaped a little like the Millenium Falcon with that circular-ish shape. Lego sets to be revealed this year say “Pilot The Ghost with 2 cockpits, 360-degree rotating gun turret, spring-loaded shooters, detachable escape pods, Holocron and more.”

There is a ship named Phantom. According to Lego sets, Phantom is known as an attack shuttle with an “opening cockpit, 2-way spring-loaded shooter, rear cargo compartment and more.” They actually say “detachable cockpit” later in the description so that’s interesting. A cockpit that is like an escape pod almost? But how do you get the cockpit back to the ship?

Ghost

Characters

The Inquisitor. Ladies and Gentleman, we have a villain! Sounds like this guy was hired by Darth Vader to finish the dirty work he started: hunt down the remaining Jedi that survived the Great Jedi Purge. He is a Pau’an, the species that lived on Utapau and let Obi-Wan know where General Grievous was hiding in ROTS. According to the EU*, Pau’ans were not friendly with the Empire, so it’s interesting to see that the Inquisitor could be the black sheep.

Ezra Bridger. We don’t know much of this character as he was only introduced by Lego as a character paired with the ship The Phantom, and is a “young Rebel hero” who has a cadet helmet and blaster. Cadet helmet? Cadet usually means someone in training for the military, so perhaps they mean training for the Rebellion? It would be interesting if it meant something else though as we know the main military at the time is obviously the Empire.

Zeb. No last name for this guy. Again, this comes from Lego as he is paired with Ghost. It says to “Join the Rebel heroes…” when referring to this set, so we can take a safe guess at knowing that Zeb is also part of the fledgling Alliance.

Chopper aka C1-10P. Oh, it’s so cute. Chopper was just introduced a few days ago as the new droid who helps out on Ghost and described as a “cranky” astromech droid. The design for this droid was inspired by an early concept drawing of R2-D2 taken from Ralph McQuarrie.

The Inquisitor

Chopper to the rescue!

The Inquisitor with stormtroopers

Our new villain in Star Wars Rebels

Final R2-D2 vs Concept Drawing by Ralph McQuarrie

Chopper

Miscellaneous Plot Points

According to Dave Filoni, Rebels is going to stick to “one story and one main group of characters”. Hmmmm…a little reminiscent of the OT, huh?

There are two primary female leads. Ezra is not a female, as the Lego synopsis says “his” in it. There is no reference to sex with Zeb, so perhaps Zeb could be a female? I’m interested to know the role these two female leads will play, as Ahsoka was such a hit in TCW. I’d love to see the main villain also be a female, but I guess I can wait on that one. Either way, girls kicking butt is awesome, so I’ll take it. Disney XD is primarily geared towards young boys; it’ll be good to see some females taking part of the action.

According to Athena Portillo (Line Producer), we will see some familiar faces. Does that mean the obvious, like Darth Vader? Or could it mean glimpses of our original heroes? Or even Boba Fett? Characters from TCW (Cad Bane anyone?!)? Or even throw in some EU stuff?

Greg Weisman points out that we won’t see what we know as the Rebel Alliance yet, because right now, it’s just a group of rebels (notice no capital R). He says this show really is about the origin of the Rebellion.

Ghost hosts a “clever and motley crew” where “this ragtag group will face threatening new villains, have thrilling adventures, and become heroes”, according to action figure packages revealed at NYCC this year. Could this be the group that forms the Rebellion? I’m guessing it might be, based on how we have seen more of the ship Ghost than anything else from Star Wars Rebels.

The Inquisitor is hunting down the remaining Jedi, so that means we could see some of those Jedi he finds. How the Inquistor ties into Ghost and the forming Rebellion could be interesting.

So that’s the latest edition of Geek Out! Rebels edition. What seems like only a little bit of information that has been leaked out in the past few months, is actually a lot more informative than you’d think.

Based on what we know now, do you think you will watch the show?

*The EU is apparently going through some reworking. A Lucasfilm Story Group has been created to keep track of “all facets of Star Wars storytelling, including movies, TV, games, and publishing.” In a nutshell, they are trying to move forward and have everything be part of one canon. I’m sure it will become more clear over time, but it may mean that the Pau’ans history with the Empire means nothing.

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8 thoughts on “Geek Out! Star Wars Rebels Edition”

I heard a rumor…that Mara Jade…might be in Rebels…I’m seriously trying not to think about it, so I won’t be crushed when it doesn’t happen.

I’m liking everything I’ve seen with this so far, and I love a good cartoon, so I’ll give it a shot! I still haven’t watched Clone Wars either *hangs head in shame*
And I am of course interested to see what they’ll do with the EU stuff in terms of canon.

Yes, I’ve definitely heard that rumor too. AND heard that she might be in Episode VII. The thing is, if they do include her, I feel like they won’t include any of the storyline. That would open a can of worms that they wouldn’t want since they don’t want to focus all the movies on pre-established EU story lines. If it did happen, there would probably be a character with red hair named Mara Jade. However, they could put her in Rebels without compromising much of her EU storyline, so that would be interesting if they did.

Great post! I’d been largely steering clear of much Rebels talk…mostly because I felt like I’d have to go to multiple sources to put the proverbial two and two together. You’ve managed to make me more excited about it 🙂

Oh so happy to hear that! I know…I’ve been seeing lots of stuff pop up all over the place but I couldn’t find anywhere that had a clear compilation of the facts, so I decided to throw it together. I’m excited for the series! TCW gave me hope that Star Wars can, in fact, live on in a TV format.